


and what we (never) were

by Larrant



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Hurr, M/M, Written for a prompt on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5818633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larrant/pseuds/Larrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>a dream of soft eyes and soft skin and soft edges.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	and what we (never) were

**Author's Note:**

> pour du, sadaf-wadj! <3 hurr hurr

 

 

He doesn’t intend on staying.

 

He _never_ intends on staying.

 

Correction; not until he’s stayed.

 

It’s too easy to stay. Too easy to fall asleep with warm arms encircling his waist, to fall into the kind of dreamless sleep that only ever seems to happen now when it’s _Hux’s_ even breathing he falls asleep to.

 

Everything is too easy with Hux. Everything that should not be easy, everything that should not be done. It is like a trap woven in harsh edges tainted by softness, mallow soft cotton that is like thick rope once it binds. Always so gentle in how it ensnares him, captures him.

 

He does not intend, precisely, on brushing the tips of his fingers through the twisted strands of hair that run in strands across Hux’s forehead, smoothing them from his skin and repeating the motion over until he's carding through the man's hair. It's not something Hux would ever tolerate if he was awake. Maybe that's why he does it. But he doesn't think about doing it, not really, not until he's actually doing it and then there's no use _thinking_ anyway.

 

Kylo's never been a deep sleeper, and there’s something about the habit of running his fingers through Hux’s hair that is somewhat soothing. Without the hair gel that combs it into place, he likes to think it feels soft.

 

Normally, after he wakes up in the night, this is the point where he leaves. He stays, sometimes, for a little longer, but he always, always leaves before the morning, before Hux can even start to wake. He doesn’t think he could actively face waking up to Hux next to him. Or worse, waking up to Hux long gone. A little hypocritical then, how he always leaves in the night, but he thinks he is selfish in that sense, that he can afford to be selfish in that sense, if only for the heart that still beat in his chest.

 

Nor- he realizes it once he's doing it- does he intend on brushing the tips of his thoughts through the man’s memories and subconscious imaginations either. And yet as always, it is too easy to, it’s just something that happens, something that lulls him in and then... what point is there in withdrawing. He does not intend to be entranced by the methodical patterns of Hux's thoughts, a neat symmetry that breaks into discord only in dreaming.

 

He should go, now, before he grows any weaker and cannot leave.

 

And yet.

 

The curiousity tugs on him, soft and insistent. It draws him now as it always has done, draws him in and draws him in too much. He’s curious, and for once Hux is actually asleep, genuinely unaware of anything. And curiousity, curiousity is there to be indulged.

 

He finds without meaning to his thumb catching in the man’s hair, caught in a soft brush across the ginger strands. And he finds himself in the same motion of soft caress delving down into the man’s mind, down below the first layer and then deeper. Deeper than merely a lullaby.

 

He hesitates. Closes his eyes. Dreams.

 

“Would you be happy here with me?”

 

A blink. Kylo turns. Light glitters from the window where he stands.

 

The question has fallen from Hux’s lips, innocuous and innocent in their half musings.

 

Kylo… blinks, again.

 

The cold eyes of his lover are soft. Oddly soft.

 

Not vulnerable, just soft.

 

There is something wistful in his tone. He is not looking at Kylo, instead to some other place- beyond him? Or simply at the wall, the hanging frames and bookshelf he knows are there, the dried vines hanging looped on a hook, the calender that is long out of use but is kept anyway for a reason neither of them know.

 

The light catches in Hux’s eyes. In his voice.

 

Nostalgia. Melancholy. Wistfulness.

 

He might wonder of what and for what, but somehow he already knows. But the question was not for him, so he does not answer.

 

He looks around instead, eyes flickering to the forest outside. It must have been there for at least several hundred years. The tree trunks were thick, their tops reaching high. Had it been there, before he looked.

 

He sees now the soft dew that still coats everything, the mountains he instinctively knows are ahead, even though they’re hidden by the treetops that are so close. He knows from the breeze that blows that there is nothing in the air that can be of anything other than morning dew and mountain wind- a thought, vague and unformed, that not even D’Qar had the same air of freshness to it.

 

Odd, but not unexpected. Even though he has not known any of this before, everything is instinctive here, familiar to him as nothing else is.

 

And inside. Inside there is a fire burning in the hearth, something old fashioned and long gone from modern technology, modern lifestyles. Something of an age long past, before civilization. He knows without needing to know that there is wood lying in a pile next to it, wood that has been harvested and cut by hand. That this place, here, that it is somewhere lying untouched by the ages and by time, living in a limbo that does not quite exist in the real world. Or maybe it does. An uncharted planet that has not yet been approached or found, deep in the Unknown Realms.

 

There is something startlingly obvious he is missing.

 

Somewhere, somehow, he thinks he might be on the wrong foot. The thought slows to a trickle in his mind, vanishes.

 

“Would you?” Hux repeats, glancing over to Kylo. This time the question does seem to be directed at him. His words verge on teasing, lighter in their tone and more relaxed, gentler. The nostalgia is gone, replaced for a faint, barely there smile. “Would you be happy here with me?”

 

Uncertainty too, Kylo thinks suddenly, beneath the lightness. The question is meant for him. But. It is meant for him, and yet he considers it might not be meant for _him_ at all. Something is wrong, he thinks, suddenly. Again? And can’t put his finger on what exactly it is.

 

(Hux’s eyes are softer, less harsh and more muted, in this natural light.)

 

Simultaneously as he thinks that, it goes, and without anything else in Hux’s words, Kylo thinks he hears everything.

 

He thinks, in a moment, that behind the question there is something that speaks of years to come and years that have been, a tone reminiscent of years to be spent in this slow town away from civilization. He knows without knowing, sees without seeing.

 

It tells Kylo of mornings waking to pale sunlight breaking through the window, waking to soft eyes and soft skin and soft edges, and as he takes in a breath there is something of nostalgia in him at the thought of rain in the evenings and festivals in the summer, laughter lines that might and already have crinkled their eyes.

 

All of it as he thinks he fleetingly experiences, all of it in but a moment, a light that has been lit soft behind his eyes.

 

Ah, he realizes, equally suddenly. And he might have known it all along. He does not know if he forgot, but now he knows, at least. A dream.

 

Had he ever forgotten?

 

Is this, is this what Hux dreams of. A simple cottage in some forgotten realm, _nothing_ rather than the grandeur he breathes into Kylo’s ears, promises in his words of steel. Something so simple, he did not think Hux would want it. But contempt is not what draws to mind. Maybe if this was not a dream, then he would. But this is a dream, and so he does not need contempt. He does not need confusion, either. Simply, he knows, and simply, he understands.

 

He realizes that Hux is still waiting for his answer.

 

He opens his mouth. Pauses. Hesitates. Wonders what to say. But in dreams hesitation is not something that likes to linger, and he does not know why he answers until he answers. Does not know what he answers until it is there.

 

“Yes,” Kylo tells him, truthfully, and he smiles then. Softly. Maybe if this was not a dream, his heart would be breaking, just a little. “Yes, I would.”

 

He blinks again, there in the soft hazel shaded morning, the gentle light flooding behind his eyelids when he closes his eyes. And then when he reopens them it is gone.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: itsakylo.tumblr.com  
> <3! 
> 
> leave anything behind- be it in way of kudos, comments, bookmarks, i just flail so much over feedback or anything, i'll love you for it xD!


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